Em. Prof. Roland Posner

Prof. Göran Sonesson

Prof. Eero Tarasti

Prof. Peeter Torop

Book review: Lyndon C.S. Way & Simon McKerrell (eds) 2017. Music as Multimodal Discourse: Semiotics, Power and Protest

Eero Tarasti

Punctum, 3(2): 141-148, 2017
DOI: 10.18680/hss.2018.0009

Abstract

It is certainly true that multimodality is in fashion – or rather anything multi-, like multi-sensoriality, the multiple (Deleuze), etc. The word first evokes just different sense organs – seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling – but most of the adherents of the new school say it is much more: it is social semiotics. Yet, when you say semiotics, thousand of lamps start to click: there are hundreds of versions, traditions, concepts, approaches within semiotics. So one should first say what is then meant by semiotics. If we very broadly accept what Umberto Eco said, namely that semiotics=signification+communication, it is evident that in multimodality we underline primarily the latter.